Stop press: Linux isn’t Win­dows!

Most Linux dis­tro’s desk­top do a good job of mask­ing the fact that Linux and Win­dows are dif­fer­ent op­er­at­ing sys­tems. There’s the small mat­ter of the filesys­tem of course, while Linux is much tighter with se­cu­rity than Win­dows. Win­dows has closed the gaps in some ar­eas – file and folder per­mis­sions, for ex­am­ple – but in oth­ers Linux re­mains way out in front. For ex­am­ple, you can’t perform an ad­min­is­tra­tive task in Linux – such as in­stalling a pro­gram – with­out sup­ply­ing your user pass­word. It’s this at­ten­tion to de­tail that makes Linux far less vul­ner­a­ble to mal­ware and hack­ers.

De­spite ap­pear­ances, Linux re­mains an op­er­at­ing sys­tem that per­forms best from the shell en­vi­ron­ment. Ubuntu has a good front end, but as you’ll see, don’t re­sist em­brac­ing the com­mand line through the Ter­mi­nal.

Ubuntu is a much more open, com­mu­ni­ty­sup­ported en­vi­ron­ment than Win­dows. It’s packed with free (and open source) soft­ware, help­ing drive down com­put­ing costs, but most sup­port is found online through fo­rums. The way Linux han­dles soft­ware – through cen­tralised repos­i­to­ries and pack­age man­agers – is another thing you need to get used to.

Fi­nally, hard­ware com­pat­i­bil­ity is no longer the issue it was. While some de­vices won’t work, you’ll find most de­vices do, and many don’t re­quire any ad­di­tional con­fig­u­ra­tion.